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The Chicken Doctor

The Architect

The Eight Million Dollar McGame

I have been watching episode after episode after episode of Grey’s Anatomy for the past several weeks. It’s my mind altering drug of choice. It’s been sucking all the difficult things in reality out of my life which has made me nice and numb to the world around me. I find myself saying, “He’s going into De-Fib call Dr. Shepherd!” And I say words like acidosis, tachycardia, ephemeral, don’t mess with the pancreas, he’s doing a whipple, and other things that I have no idea what they mean and obviously can’t really spell them or pronounce them correctly. The human degradation that occurs in that show is so highly revolting and ridiculous that I can’t look away. I simply….can’t…stop….watching!

I may never be able to enter a hospital without thinking that every doctor in the place has either died and come back to life or slept with at least three other people that they work with. I will just assume that they have struggled with drug abuse, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer and that they’ve been arrested or admitted to the psyche ward at least once. I will also think that they are about to break ground on some amazing never before attempted surgery that will help people with brain tumors and I’ll probably look at them through my Grey’s Goggles and think they are some level of HOT. Even if they are not even remotely attractive, obviously they are hot, because all the people at Seattle Grace seem to think that everything wearing scrubs is hot. And THEY TALK ABOUT THE HOTNESS EVERY CHANCE THEY GET, because obviously that’s how people in the medical field deal with their stress. Yeah, I have a problem.

Clay will be so happy when I’m done with my Grey’s Anatomy binge and decide to enter real life to participate with real humans that have real problems. He knows that I have odd coping mechanisms, so he watches me watching this awful show and he does something more mind filling like plays online chess and asks to have his back scratched while his wife gets stuck in McDreamy Land until she can resurface.

Okay, so now I have to share my little crazy quirk with you. Every once in a while I will play the “What If” game. I started playing it in my head recently after a Grey’s Anatomy episode in which Dr. Izzy Stevens inherited eight million dollars from her dead fiance. She had no idea that he was a wealthy man because she didn’t know him outside his hospital bed. He was a heart patient, they fell in love, he asked her to marry him in a moment of panic when she was purposefully stopping his heart by cutting his L-vat wire in hopes of stealing a donor heart from another patient so he could be bumped up to the top spot on the recipient list and get the heart. You got all that? Okay, so Izzy’s guy dies, she falls apart and then one day she gets a check in the mail for eight million dollars from the guy she was going to marry that she only knew in the hospital bed. Izzy sticks the check on the fridge because she doesn’t know what to do with the money…..and here starts my “What If” game.

What if I suddenly inherited 8 millions dollars?

Okay, that’s too easy. So, I put stipulations on it. Now you can play the game yourself and believe me it’s not easy. It goes like this.

1. You are given 8 million dollars cash.
2. You have exactly 24 hours to spend all of it.
3. You can not spend one penny over or under the 8 million or you lose it all.
4. You have to spend the money by purchasing, not donating.
5. You can help as many people as you want, but it has to be by purchasing or paying for service, so if you want to help your favorite charity you have to find out what they need and buy it for them or you have to pay their bills. So, you would have to go to the electric company and pay the bill for them, you couldn’t just give them the money to pay the bill.
6. All transactions have to be completed within the 24 hour period, which makes large purchases like real estate and land difficult, but not entirely impossible.
7. You are allowed to purchase services as long as those services are paid for in advance and a contract is signed stating what the service will entail and a comprehensive price list of the service.
8.Remember you are toting around cash with you to do all these transactions. You can go get cashier’s checks, but remember how much time that takes.
9. You may NOT hire anyone to help you.
10. Go!

You see how this is difficult, right? Do you know how hard it is to spend that much money in one day and complete the transactions? Of course, I change the rules all the time, but I keep to the 24 hour period. I have yet to be able to successfully spend all the money in time. It’s such an exercise in not thinking small that I have to get out of my head the basics of life. You can’t just go buy food, clothes and pay off your debt and donate the rest, that’s not big enough although yes you can do that, but you’d be wasting time. You know how long it takes to buy a vehicle right? Well, think how long it might take to buy 10 vehicles. So time is a factor.

I find myself wanting to buy land and housing, but I’m not sure if I can get those transactions done in 24 hours unless I have all the right people at my disposal, which I probably won’t. My latest plan is after I help my family, a few churches and a host of other charities that feed and clothe people, I would race to the hospital and say, “I have this amount of money! I want you to go to the oldest unpaid accounts and start paying them off until there is no money left.” I realize this would help some people and would be useless for others, but it’s the only way I can think of that would get rid of every penny without going over or under the $8 million.

Wah-la! I win!

I have come full circle in this game. At first I was paying off my debt, buying everyone a good vehicle, adding on to my house, building a barn, buying land, purchasing stuff for the kids’ school, paying the mortgage for our church, pre-paying college, etc. It was all very focused on trying to insure that I had what I wanted and that everything I loved was taken care of as it should be. But, then I realized that’s just not going to cut it. Yes, I could pay my bills, but trying to renovate the house and build a barn? No, there was no time for that and no way a contractor could give me an accurate estimation of how much that would cost for me to pre-pay the services and it would waste so much time. I even tried to think how I could purchase something that would continue to generate income for me. But, in the end I just wanted to be done with it. What a stressful thing it would be to have the responsibility to spend that much cash in one day and keep your integrity as a human being.

Izzy Stevens finally built a free medical clinic with her $8 million, she didn’t keep any of it for herself. Once again, Grey’s did not let me down by being realistic. Thank God! Because it would be a real shame for me to come out of my McSteamy coma to find that the show actually had some element of normal human reaction or interation to it. So, as I continue to languish in my catatonic state of Greydom you all can play my game to help distract you from whatever it is you need to ignore at the moment. Not that I want you to join me in my McCrazy McGrey’s place, because that would just be McWeird.

What if my friends? What if you were suddenly thrown into the $8 million dollars in a day game?

I think we all play this little scenario in our head every once in awhile! Your post reminds of the Richard Pryor movie ‘Brewster’s Millions’ He had to spend 30million in 30 days in order to inherit 300 million with all kinds of little catches. Merry Christmas!

Well, I don’t know if this would work with the time frame thing, buy I would take the whole amount and find a few good mutual funds to invest it in. Then I could use the interest to help myself and other people, while giving myself more time to make decisions.

Yeah, in my head I’m not allowed to “save” any of it because it would be too easy to take any amount and throw it in a pot and be done. So rule #11. You are not allowed to buy any mutual funds or purchase stocks.

Sorry, I can’t resist….. I’d use at least a small chunk of it to purchase an 18 wheeler full of tampons and send it to your boys. That leads me to a whole ‘nother game in my head of trying to imagine what they would build with that many. 🙂

First of all … can I just say how relieved I am to know that someone else has been spending time watching every episode of Gray’s Anatomy. I don’t know what I was doing when this show first started, but I caught the McBus just recently. Yes, I started with season one about a month ago and watched endlessly up until season 7, which I’m like 16th in line for at the library now. I check them out, but have seriously considered getting Netflix because I don’t know if I can wait any longer! When I read your post I frantically had to tell my husband … “see, see, I’m not the only one!”

To answer the 8 million dollar question … hmmm … that is difficult. And complicated. And lots of rules. I’m one of those people that has to ponder such challenges to death. I’ll get back to ya! 😉

western union would be very busy because I’d have to utilize them to pay student loans. while that was being arranged, id be on the phone to a car dealer and line up the paper work for new vehicles for all of my family members, so I could just stop by and pay them. i’d also stop by all of the banks that hold family mortgages and pay them off. i’d have to utilize family to get things set up, but if i can do that, then i can accomplish that. i’d buy a ton of gift cards from various stores. i’d also buy a fair amount of gold. after that, whatever was left over I would start paying off other bills for random people, like going to a hospital and spending the rest.

I’d buy exactly $8 million worth of gold ingots. Less the amount it would cost to rent a giant bank vault to store them. Then, I’d take my time and figure out exactly how to manage this windfall. Games –and rules– are meant to be parsed!

I would pay off our mortgage, pay off my husband’s land, buy new tractors, combines, swather, rake, any other farm equipment we might need….pay off my student loans. I would buy all of my family new cars with the extended warranty and prepay gas cards for them for a long time. I would go buy lots of gift cards to Wal-Mart and Dillons. I would pay off the medical bills of my family members. I would give to my church and our Christian school so they can pay the staff there without worries. I would also set up scholarships for lots of students to be able to attend who might not otherwise be able. We also have a family in our area who recently lost everything to a fire. I would have to do a major shopping spree for them.

I started down that road last year but it bothered me too much that they all just kept sleeping with each other so I gave it up. That and I couldn’t handle some of the emotional turmoil in my state of depression!

Your game is so complicated to think about I gave up thinking about it. 24hrs is too hard. I would take more time and make sure more charities got what they needed! that’s my cop out!

Well, first of all, I’d toddle off to the bank where the personal bankers would fall over themselves to help me seeing as HELL $8million in CASH!! So I’d deposit all the money into an account. Then, I would leave the grovelling bankers behind and go home to do some serious online shopping!
First, I’d book and pay for open, round the world tickets for me, my soon-to-be-hubby (hello honeymoon!), my sister and her hubby, my parents, inlaws and siblings in law. I’d also book open stays at fancy hotels/spas all over the world.
Then, I’d buy LandCruiser with an off road trailer for myself. I’d pay off my schooling and buy shares as an investment.
Then I’d buy several vehicles for the local charity I work with and pre-pay their bills for the next 5 years.
And if, after all that there was money left over? I’d buy out my crazy insane boss so she can finally bloody retire!

Your’s is a fun game that I play myself lately as our part of the country is currently transitioning into the Natural Gas boom that has hit across the country. We hear rumors about how much money is being generated from the leases and buy backs from the wells – it is mind boggling! We’ve heard rumors of people making $40,000 – $80,000 A MONTH on these wells. During the stress of the holidays, I would play the game “What if” by saying, “What if we had an extra $500 a month, $1000 a month, and on and on until I reached about $4000 extra a month because beyond that, I have no idea how we would spend that much money.

Obviously, I know it wouldn’t be hard to spend that much extra a month, but my husband is self employed as a landscaper and I am a stay at home mom to four and we farm on the side, so even $500 extra a month is unimaginable to us! I have my doubts about it ever being true, but as the winter looms and landscaping turns to snow removal, it becomes a delicious little diversion to imagine what it would be like for my husband to NOT have to work all winter long, us scraping by month to month, praying for a few inches of snow every month to generate income, and instead be able to willy nilly pick a date, fly to somewhere warm and not have to search for hours on Hotwire.com trying to find the best priced airline tickets, cheapest hotel rooms, and best deals all around.

My first luxury aside from paying off our farm, finally finishing our house and building a beautiful bank barn and putting up fencing around our 40 acres would be a no-expense spared trip to Disney! Our kids at 8, 6, 4 and 2 are the perfect ages to make a trip to the Magic Kingdom truly magical and to not have to worry about how to maximize our funds would be so amazing.

My charity dreams are to donate to our church and our former church and renovate their kitchens to state of the art! Then I would create a charity for your everyday, average kid – not the stellar athlete, star student, etc., just those normal kids who don’t get any breaks because they are just “Middle of the road”. They never get the chance at amazing scholarships etc. I’d like to see those kids be able to apply to my charity to get something they otherwise could not afford – like money for a car or a prom dress or to be able to go on the class trip with their friends that otherwise they couldn’t afford. And I loved it this holiday season when they talked about the “Lay-away elves” – people going in and paying off lay away bills or on Dave Ramsey when he has people talk about going to a restaurant and paying for someone else’s bill. That would be a lot of fun!

PS – if you ever get that 8 million, I’d be happy to take some of it off your hands!

The difficulty in buying houses or cars is all the checking of credit and arranging financing. With cash and a dozen phone calls to certain friends, I am sure I could spend $8M in 24 hours. There are three children and myself. So, that is 4 cars and 4 houses. 4 grandchildren could have a prepaid college education. My student loan would take a chunk of the amount. Buying rental property would assure that some money came into the purse in the future. Buying several pieces of farms with houses would be a good investment and place for me to live in the future. Plus, I already have a wishlist that could easily be filled. My children and grandchildren could email me a list in hours if not minutes!

Education, cars, homes, property, appliances, small moving truck for me, laptops, pickup for me besides a new car. Yes, I could spend that money in 24 hours. I could phone ahead or visit in person and have meat and freezers ordered and delivered to my children before the 24 hours. Farming equipment, solar panels…so I pay for them and await the delivery and set up, all paid for.

I know food banks that would love to have extra food, even if I had to pay grocery store prices, which they don’t! Women working in Walmart are really struggling, living in crowded conditions with relatives. I could buy them homes.

Yes, I could order a fleet of cars and just go in and pay for them. Homeowners who got their selling price would be overjoyed. I believe there is a way to give money to a college ahead of time for little children who will be educated later. If not, why not buy a home and hold it and sell it after you have won the prize? Is that legal?

Then, people have to pay property tax and car insurance. A large home or luxury car might put people into a situation where they could not pay for the taxes and insurance. That is where a piece of property or homes to sell later might help. Gold bars would work, too.

i used to hate mushrooms till my hubby fileld them with sausage bakes with cream cheese and popped them in the over and smothered them in mozza cheese. mmmmmm. that’s the only way to eat those suckers!